FanHouse MarkChmura

This season, FanHouse writers will be taking their cameras around the NFL snapping photos of what people are wearing to tailgates and games. We've cleverly titled it "FanHouse in the Stands." Today, as a public service, I will be discussing what the average fan wears to rep their NFL team and writing down some of the unwritten rules of sports attire fandom. My photo essay blacks out their faces as I am a closet fan of Glamour Magazine's "Fashion Do's and Don'ts."

Don't Wear Unrelated Team Jerseys to Sporting Events.

These fans clearly spent some jack to purchase jerseys of two very good NFL quarterbacks. Neither of those quarterbacks were playing in the Tampa Bay-Texans preseason game however. If you wear those jerseys to a game where those quarterbacks are not playing, you are telling the world, "I am a braying donkey, please abuse me."

The only exception to this is the entertaining guy I saw wearing an Eagles jersey to a Texans-Cowboys game in Houston as his way of rooting against Dallas.

Last week, while the Earth stopped orbiting the sun as Brett Favre decided his future, former teammate Mark Chmura offered up his unsolicited opinion on the whole sordid ordeal. According to Chmura, who's apparently relevant somewhere, if you don't think Favre is the most selfish person on the planet, you're fooling yourself. Duly noted, sir.

And today, Chmura defies the odds and goes for more than his allotted 15 minutes of fame: he has more thoughts on the Packers and Favre:

"Well, you know it didn't have to come to this," Chmura said. "You wish the two sides could have sat down and ironed out their differences and come together to talk about the situation. It doesn't look like that is going to happen." ...

"My point is this: The Packers clearly don't want him back. If you don't want him back, don't hold him hostage. Which is what they are doing. Release him or trade him. This is so unfair."

You know, just in case anybody cared what Chmura's thoughts were on the matter. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Don Walker writes that Chmura and Favre, once chummy during their playing days together, have grown apart since Chmura was charged with sexual assault in 2000 (he was acquitted in 2001).

The two haven't talked in years, but former Packers center Frank Winters serves as an intermediary for the two. You know, it's just like a high school romance but exactly different.

Whatever, Chmura thinks the organization is holding Favre hostage, despite his unbelievably selfish nature. Got it? Got it.

In the spring of 2006, former Green Bay Packers tight end Mark Chmura made public statements in which he ripped Brett Favre for the way he prevented the franchise from planning for the future by refusing to state definitively whether he was going to play that season.

Among Chmura's comments at the time:

"People who don't think that it's all about him are fooling themselves" ...

"These quotes are 'I am better than the game,'" Chmura said. "'I will make my decision when I want, and Ted Thompson and Mike McCarthy aren't going to tell me what to do'" ...

"He's a selfish guy. He's a very selfish guy."

I like Favre and I don't like Chmura, but in this instance, Chmura might have been right. Favre's waffling on retirement has shown him to be driven by what he thinks is best for him, even at the expense of the team. That's the definition of selfish.

Last year I noted that I found it shocking that fans still wear Mark Chmura jerseys at Lambeau Field. Chmura, for those who don't remember, was a Packers tight end in the 1990s who was accused of raping a teenager at a post-prom party.

He was acquitted of rape, but over the course of the trial we learned all sorts of sordid details about his life that make it hard for me to understand how anyone could think he's an admirable person. (If you want to know more about those details, Court TV's coverage is a good place to start.)

After I wrote that post last year, I heard from several Packers fans who told me that Chmura jerseys are actually a common sighting at Lambeau. But now Zoner Sports has a picture that takes things one step further: A Chmura jersey worn by a kid who looks like he's too young to have been alive while Chmura was playing.

It's one thing to have bought a Chmura jersey while he was an active player and before his rape trial, and to still own that jersey today. But did someone actually think it would be a good idea to buy that kid a Chmura jersey at some point after we learned that his favorite off-field activities included hot tub parties with drunk teenagers? And how are Rae Carruth jerseys selling these days?

Mark Chmura is probably my all-time least-favorite NFL player. Chmura's off-field conduct wasn't as bad as Rae Carruth's or anything, but there's just something that rubs me the wrong way about the hypocrisy of a guy who goes around talking about the importance of family values, right up until a teenager says he raped her at a post-prom party. (He was acquitted of rape; no one disputes that he was a married man in his 30s hanging out in a hot tub with drunk teenage girls.)

So it was a little stunning to me to learn from Rumors and Rants that if you take a trip to Lambeau Field, you can still see people wearing Mark Chmura jerseys. Really, Packer fan? That's the guy whose name you want across your back?

I get that sometimes fans buy jerseys and things don't work out the way they thought. My own bad jersey choices include a Barry Sanders jersey right before he retired and a Terrell Davis jersey right before he blew out his knee. But it's time to put the Chmura jersey in that dark corner of your closet where no one will ever see it. He's a lousy human being, and besides, he hasn't played in eight years. Someone get this guy a Donald Lee jersey or something.